My Favourite Authors Pt 2 Alison Weir

Second one my list of favourite authors is Alison Weir, who is a prolific writer of history, both fiction and non-fiction.  I took a few months in 2021 to read all of her books about the six wives of Henry VIII and I really enjoyed them.

Six Tudor Queens Series

Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen ✔

Anne Boleyn, A King's Obsession ✔

Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen ✔

Anna of Kleve, The Princess in the Portrait ✔

Katheryn Howard, The Scandalous Queen ✔

Katharine Parr, The Sixth Wife ✔

My Favourite Authors Pt 1 Philippa Gregory

 One of my favourite genres is historical fiction and I mean real historical fiction, not stories set in the 1900s, but earlier, say the 1600-1700s. I laughed out loud when I heard someone say that stories set in the 1990s are now being considered 'historical'! Ha! Philippa Gregory is one of my favourite writers of British royalty history. Philippa has written several series and of course, I'm trying to read all of them. Here's the list of how I'm doing with reading through her backlist.

The Fairmile Series

• Tidelands ✔
• Dark Tides ✔
• Dawnlands ✔

The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels

• The Lady of the Rivers ✔
• The White Queen ✔
• The Red Queen ✔
• The Kingmaker's Daughter ✔
• The White Princess
• The Constant Princess
• The King's Curse
• Three Sisters, Three Queens
• The Other Boleyn Girl ✔
• The Boleyn Inheritance
• The Taming of the Queen ✔
• The Queen's Fool
• The Virgin's Lover
• The Last Tudor ✔
• The Other Queen

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2000s)

 I have the 2015 edition and when I first got it I often used it to pick a good book to read, however, I totally forgot that I had it for several years. I've taken it from my bookshelf and am going to leave it where I can see it in 2023. Hopefully I can get through a few more. I've copied the list from 1001 Book Reviews.com for the 2000s. Let's see how many I have read and can get to next year!

• Orange - read before 2023
• Blue - read in 2023

2000s

1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
1 a. Animal’s People – Indra Sinha
1 b. The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery
2. Saturday – Ian McEwan
2 a. Falling Man – Don DeLillo
2 b. The Children’s Book – A.S. Byatt
3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
3 a. The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
3 b. Invisible – Paul Auster
4. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
4 a. Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4 b. American Rust – Philipp Meyer
5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
5 a. The Kindly Ones – Jonathan Littell
5 b. Cost: A Novel – Roxana Robinson
6. The Sea – John Banville
6 a. The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
6 b.The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
7. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
7 a. Against the Day – Thomas Pynchon
7 b. Home – Marilynne Robinson
8. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
8 a. Carry Me Down – M.J.Hyland
8 b. Kieron Smith, Boy – James Kelman
9. The Master – Colm Tóibín
9 a. Mother’s Milk – Edward St.Aubyn
9 b. The Gathering – Anne Enright
10. Vanishing Point – David Markson
10 a. Measuring the World – Daniel Kehlmann
10 b. The Blind Side Of The Heart – Julia Franck
11. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
11 a. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka
11 b. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
12. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
13 a. The Accidental – Ali Smith
14. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
14 a. The Line of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst
15. The Colour – Rose Tremain
15 a. 2666 – Roberto Bolano
16. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
16 a. Small Island – Andrea Levy
17. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
17 a. The Book about Blanche and Marie – Per Olov Enquist
18. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
20. Islands – Dan Sleigh
20 a. Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirovsky
21. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
21 a. The Swarm – Frank Schatzing
22. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
23. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
23 a. Your Face Tomorrow – Javier Marias
24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
24 a. A Tale of Love and Darkness – Amos Oz
25. The Double – José Saramago
26. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
27. Unless – Carol Shields
27 a. Lady Number Thirteen – Jose Carlos Somoza
28. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
28 a. The Successor – Ismail Kadare
29. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
29 a. Vernon God Little – DBC Pierre
30. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
30 a. The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
31. In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
32. Shroud – John Banville
33. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
34. Youth – J.M. Coetzee
35. Dead Air – Iain Banks
35 a. Snow – Orhan Pamuk
36. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
37.The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
38. Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
39. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
40. Platform – Michael Houellebecq
41. Schooling – Heather McGowan
41 a. Soldiers of Salamis – Javer Cercas
42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
42 a. I’m Not Scared – Niccolo Ammaniti
43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
44. Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
44 a. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
45. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
46. Fury – Salman Rushdie
47. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
48. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
49. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
50. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
51. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
52. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
53. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
53 a. Bartleby and Co. – Enrique Vila-Matas
54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
55. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
56. Under the Skin – Michel Faber
57. Ignorance – Milan Kundera
58. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
59. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
60. City of God – E.L. Doctorow
61. How the Dead Live – Will Self
62. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
64. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
65. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
66. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
67. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
68. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
69. Pastoralia – George Saunders

What's On Hold?

 Here are the books that I currently have on hold at our library:

• The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris - in transit
• Dawnlands by Philippa Gregory - in transit
• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald - #1 on 1 copy
• Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch - #2 on 2 copies
• What Happened to You? by Bruce Duncan Perry and Oprah Winfrey - #4 on 13 copies
• The Netanyahu's by Joshua Cohen - #16 on 2 copies
• The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon - #18 on 5 copies
• Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk - #19 on 6 copies
• The Measure by Nikki Erlick - #20 on 6 copies
• What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo - #25 on 4 copies
• After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid - #27 on 7 copies
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus #85 on 24 copies

Now this list is just a moment in time, and subject to change. I often put books on hold and then take them off after giving the book a bit more thought. "Do I really want to spend my precious, limited time left in my life reading a book simply because it was recommended by someone I don't even know?" Also, once the book is in my hands and I give it a flip through I sometimes realize it's just not for me and off it comes from my list. Life is too short to waste it on books that I won't enjoy. Also, if I've waited for a really long time I sometimes lose interest in reading a book.

Library Haul for Sat Dec 10/22

I must have been impatient while waiting for one of this week's library books because I broke down and bought the ebook set of books 1-6 of The Last Kingdom. Hubby and I are buddy reading it and having it as an ebook is great because we actually read at the same pace. 

Here is the list of what I have out from the library:

• The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
• Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir
• The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa Gregory
• The Abbot's Tale by Conn Iggulden

2023 Read Around the World Challenge

I enjoy finding books from around the world to read. It's important to try to expand your worldview of course, and it's good for us to read about life from different perspectives.

 North America

South America

Europe

An Island

Africa

Antarctica/Arctic

Middle East

Africa

Russia

Asia

Australia/New Zealand

Read through the Ages Challenge

 I always love to read older books- often early Pulitzer prize winners, or books considered classics, so this challenge might be a fun one to attempt in 2023.

A Book Set Before 1869

A Book Set in the 1870s-1880s

A Book Set in the 1890s-1900s

A Book Set in the 1910s-1920s

A Book Set in the 1930s-1940s

A Book Set in the 1950s-1960s

A Book Set in the 1970s-1980s

A Book Set in the 1990s-2000s

A Book Set in the 2010s-2020s

A Book Set in the Future

2023 Genre Reading Challenge

 How about trying to read a book from each of the following genres?

Fantasy

Historical Fiction

Science Fiction

Contemporary

Poetry

Romance

Mystery/Suspense

Non-Fiction

Horror/Thriller

Classics

2023 Always Fully Booked Reading Challenge

 For 2023 I've got the "Always Fully Booked" planner and it has several interesting challenges inside it.  There are a lot of ideas for reading books outside my usual favourite genres so I'm going to give this one a go and see how I do.

A 2022 Award Winning Book

A Book with a One-Word Title

An "Own Voices" Novel

A Book Written in Multiple Perspectives

A Book with a Proper Noun in the Title

A Book with an LGBTQ+ Protagonist

A Book Set in the Decade You Were Born

A Book that Features a Disability or Chronic Illness

A Book with a Dual Timeline

A Book that Discusses Mental Health

A Fairytale or Myth Retelling

A Genre-Hybrid Book

A Novel Written in Verse

A Book Involving Magic

An Autobiography or Memoir

The Second Book in a Series

A Book with a Gem/Stone in the Title

An Audiobook with a Full Cast

A Book Recommended on Social Media

A Book with "Found Family"

A Backlist Book from an Author You Love

A Book with Food in the Title

A Book Published in 2023

A Book with an Illustrated Cover

A Book with More than 500 Pages

A Book with the Same Title as a Song

A Book by an AAPI Author

A Book Set on a Different Continent than You

A Book with a Colour in the Title

A Book Set in a Small Town

A Standalone Book

A Book Recommended by a Friend

A to Z Challenge

 The goal of this challenge is to read one book for every letter of the alphabet based on the title of the book (not including 'the'  or 'a'). 

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

2023's First Reading Challenge

I'm excited to begin my reading blog with a link to the first challenge that I will be participating in: 2023 Historical Fiction. Historical Fiction is probably my favourite genre to read and the category that I read the most. 

The challenge offers 6 levels of completion:

20th Century Reader - 2 books

Victorian Reader - 5 books

Renaissance Reader - 10 books

Medieval Reader - 15 books

Ancient History Reader - 25 books

Prehistoric Reader - 50+ books